Gains for Kenyan market as YouTube turns 7

May 21, 2012 2:47 pm

By CORRESPONDENT, NAIROBI, Kenya, May 21 – YouTube is celebrating its seventh birthday on Monday.

It’s been a magnificent seven years for the video-sharing website that was acquired by Google in 2006. The last seven years have been a remarkable period of transformation and growth from YouTube.

User-generated content remains the lifeblood of the site and makes up some of the best-known and most-loved videos on the site, and YouTube has helped uncover a new generation of talented performers and content producers.

The video-sharing platform has seen a number of milestones during these seven years, including the launch of its Kenyan domain on October 5th, 2011.

The domain, available on http://www.youtube.co.ke continues to give Kenyans access to the most informative and entertaining video content most relevant to them. The content available is inclusive and ranges from the amateur to the professional. The local domain also ensures that the videos played load quickly even in areas with low bandwidth – increasing relevant content and improving access remain key priorities for Google in Africa.

“The content industry is becoming increasingly diverse, and as we celebrate YouTube’s seventh anniversary, Google is happy to be keeping pace with the changing needs of Kenyan consumers, content creators and businesses,” Joseph Mucheru, Google Kenya Country Manager commented, “Since the launch of the Kenyan domain, we continue to see an upsurge in creative, informative and educative content go up.”

YouTube has become the go-to destination for the best video content on the web. Whether you want to watch the latest music video from camp mulla, listen to social commentary at Kuweni Serious, or immerse yourself in cultural events. The local domain allows Kenyans to catch up with the latest news, relive magical moments from popular programmes and even shape the outcome of future programming.

Local professional content producers continue to create new avenues to reach their audience; having a YouTube channel offers consumers the flexibility to access the content whenever they want, and also enables producers to interact directly with them.

Some of the biggest broadcasters who have active YouTube channels include: NTV, KTN, Citizen TV, K24 TV, KBC TV, Kiss TV and Capital FM. Entertainment and lifestyle channels also continue to thrive – producers such as Kula Happy are gaining popularity through their channel.

In addition to the standard YouTube experience, users have the option to watch videos with YouTube Feather. This “light” version only includes the site’s most basic features, to help ensure that those with low-speed Internet connections are able to play videos play faster. YouTube Feather can be found in TestTube (http://www.youtube.com/testtube), the area on the site where new products are tested.

We look forward to continue stimulating the production of local content, and to helping Kenyans broadcast positive stories about themselves.

YouTube is the world’s most popular online video community allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share originally created videos.

YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small. YouTube, LLC is based in San Bruno, Calif., and is a subsidiary of Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies on the other hand connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets.